Electrostatic processing is a known technique for producing fibers having a very small diameter and particularly nanofibers having diameters on the order of about 1 to about 100 nanometers. Electrostatic processing can also be employed to manufacture microfibers having diameters in the range of about 0.1 microns to about 10 microns.
In general, electrostatic processing techniques employ an electrostatic force to draw a charged liquid polymeric formulation from a source to a collector. An electrostatic field is used to accelerate the liquid formulation from the source to the collector on which the electrostatically processed polymer is collected.